Off-duty hero's quick thinking saves her life

AN OFF-DUTY marine rescue volunteer spent hours in water to save an elderly woman who he found floating face-down.

Gary Pick was about to have dinner on his yacht at the Tweed marina when he heard the calls for help from some walkers who had noticed a body near his vessel.

Mr Pick, a marine rescue volunteer, had been trained for similar scenarios and jumped in the water without hesitation.

"I didn't even think," he said. "I just saw this person in the water. I was barefoot, which wasn't great because there was a lot of oyster shells in that area; I turned her over and she started to breath and she sort of coughed and spluttered."

The razor-sharp oysters meant Mr Pick couldn't shift the woman to land. He believes she had fallen a couple of metres from a nearby walkway and her leg was badly broken and gashed from the nearby rocks, a wound that the Uki witness described as like "a chainsaw injury".

Thankfully another Marine Rescue Pt Danger volunteer, Gil Thomas, was nearby at the time and soon jumped in to help, the pair keeping the woman afloat until emergency services took over two hours later.

Mr Pick has since tried to find out how the elderly woman is recovering.